Thursday, May 14, 2009

The Glasgow city council has declared 200-year-old Paddy's Market a "crime-ridden midden" and announced a "new vision", which includes plans to revitalise the area and lease units to artists and "legitimate traders". Current residents have been given notice to vacate the site by tomorrow, reports UTV News.

The market, tucked under railway arches in a lane running between the city centre and the River Clyde, is unique and haphazard. Clothes, books and furniture are strewn along rickety tables and camp-beds. But Michael Burns, a fifth-generation hawker, says this is part of its appeal. "You cannot make this city all shiny and polished and pretend it's something that it's not. We serve a need. Paddy's is a reminder that poverty still exists here. Closing us might take the problem out of sight, but it doesn't solve it."

It's classic: despite the council's talk of renting the site to legitimate traders, the current occupants are legitimate, too. They pay £130,000 a year in rent, plus taxes.

Sounds like the Council thinks gentrified market sellers are more legit than the people who are there now.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

What a great idea. The Business Mirror has the details of this terrific and catchy proposal that's currently being debated in the Philippines.

Key details:

1. Under the Magna Carta, informal-sector workers will be required to pay no less than P50 ($1) but not more than P100 ($2) as a registration fee in exchange for a license to operate and benefits, such as health and accident insurance, and other social protection schemes that will be granted to the informal-sector workers.and2. the government could raise from P1.23 billion to P2.46 billion (in US dollars, from $26 million to $52 million) in taxes

According to 2005 stats, the Philippines has 24.6 million people working in the informal economy, while formal-sector workers number just 5.3 million.

The North Norfolk News offers the story of one UK locality's attempt to crack down on wily traders. The dangerous and unfair types: "burger vans, and two or three traders in a lay-by instead of one." You know government has become insane when the Chamber of Commerce spokesperson has the most sane response: that the boom in streetside trading is a "sign of the times" born out of people seeking low-cost business start-ups in the recession.

Friday, May 1, 2009

That's what the governments of both Ghana and Uganda are telling people who are looking for jobs: work in the informal sector. The Ghanaian Chronicle and Monitor have the details.

Money quote:"The 18,000 jobs government creates annually are very minimal compared to the number of jobless people. The President has already directed that we focus our intervention to the informal sector to overcome this problem of unemployment in the country."-- Uganda's Labour Minister Emmanuel Otaala

There's an unspoken corollary here: that government must work with and assist informal businesses as they seek to grow.

About Me

I spent most of the past four years hanging out with street hawkers, smugglers, and sub-rosa import/export firms to write Stealth of Nations, a book that chronicles the global growth of System D--the parallel economic arena that today accounts for half the jobs on the planet.
Prior to that, I lived in squatter communities across four continents to write Shadow Cities, a book that attempts to humanize these vibrant, energetic, and horribly misunderstood communities.
My articles on cities, politics, and economic issues have appeared in many publications, including Harper's, Scientific American, Forbes, Fortune, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Metropolis, and City Limits. Before becoming a reporter, I worked as a community organizer and studied philosophy. I live in New York City and do most of my writing on manual typewriters.